The last sunset

‎Sir, we have detected Soviet R-12 missiles in San Cristóbal. It is October 14, 1962.

‎This was the earth-shattering news for U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

‎Eight days after the discovery, the American president announced a naval blockade of Cuba and demanded that the Soviet Union remove its missiles from the island.

‎Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, with the help of Castro, managed to smuggle approximately 42 nuclear warheads into Cuba. The medium-range missiles reached the Cuban countryside.

‎America had already positioned its nuclear weapons in Turkey. But Soviet superiority was clear. The Soviet missiles could reach Washington in twenty minutes. The American missiles, meanwhile, needed about two minutes less to strike the heart of Russia.

‎Two days into the blockade, Soviet ships approached the quarantine zone. At that moment, the world realized there would be no escape. Some declared that nuclear war had begun. Yet, moments before the end, those ships turned back.

‎But the Soviets carried out their act. They shot down an American aircraft over Cuba, killing pilot Chuck Molds on October 26.

‎Chuck's wife watched television, weeping, her children around her.

‎Then, voices rose in protest against the invasion’s delay. One of President Kennedy’s generals—a man suffering from back pain—stood up, pointed his finger at the sun, and said: "This will be the last sunset humanity ever sees."

‎The American president refused to invade. Yet he could not resist his brother Robert, who urged him to do so.

‎Meanwhile, Fidel Castro pleaded with Premier Khrushchev to strike first, before the invasion of Cuba began.

‎On October 28, Kennedy announced the invasion of Cuba. The Soviet Union declared war on America. And World War III began.

‎With the first movement of the American military toward Cuba, the first missile had already been launched at Washington. Hundreds of thousands of casualties. They suffered worse than Hiroshima. Their skin burned and slid off their bones. No river was near them. They could only die, drowning in their own melted flesh. Hundreds of those who survived would endure agony for years to come.

‎But the war did not end.

‎On the third day, a Soviet missile was launched, but it exploded over a small village inside Cuba.

‎The American president struck the Soviet Union with missiles from Turkey. Death was a wholesale deal. No funerals were enough.

‎According to the German Friedrich, that was just a warm-up for what was to come. The U.S. military did not delay in bombing Soviet bases in Cuba. The Soviets did the same, bombing the American base at Guantánamo. The war exceeded millions of casualties. But that was not the worst.

‎The worst was the nuclear winter.

‎Three months into the bombardment, dust began to cover the sky. First over the whole of America and Europe, then it spread to Cuba. Cuban children saw the sun disappear. They thought it was an eclipse.

‎That Cuban girl asked her mother: "When will the light come back, Mama?"

‎Her mother replied, weeping: "The light was here… it was here."

‎But the sun never returned. Temperatures plunged below freezing in Florida that November. Snow fell on Havana for the first time in centuries.

‎Famine came faster than bombs. Grain silos were looted; livestock was slaughtered. Then people ate the zoo animals. Then they ate whatever was left.

‎President Kennedy, who had survived the first strikes because he was in a bunker beneath the White House, emerged after three months to see Washington as a ghost city. Its buildings stood, but with no windows, no people, no sound.

‎On the wall of the Oval Office, one of the first survivors had written in charcoal:

‎"We won the war. But we lost tomorrow."

‎Seven years later, a camera was found in the ruins of Moscow. On its final reel, Khrushchev whispered:

‎"Tell my grandchildren… that their grandfather turned off the sun. For no reason… except that he was afraid of the shadow."

‎Then the old man wept, and the tape ended.